


Home

by servantofclio



Series: Julian Shepard [4]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, it's shepard and it's just the first time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:54:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24191671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/servantofclio/pseuds/servantofclio
Summary: Shepard and Tali have had many homes over the years: here are glimpses of them.
Relationships: Male Shepard/Tali'Zorah nar Rayya
Series: Julian Shepard [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/696426
Comments: 3
Kudos: 25





	Home

1.

Home was an apartment on Arcturus Station, which Julian Shepard never understood was small until his mothers took him back to Earth to visit his grandparents, and he saw what a real groundside house looked like. Their home on the station seemed smaller after that, though still big enough for him and both his moms, big enough to have his own room and spread out projects on the table. And besides, there was the rest of the station, and though he’d never know it as well as his mom Rae did (she knew every bolt and section seal), he knew his way around, and when he was tired of motherly supervision, there was the atrium or the docks or a dozen other places to hang out.

By the time he was seventeen, home was a chrysalis: he was ready to burst out and see something new, become someone new.

2.

Home was _Rayya_ , one of the Flotilla’s precious liveships, and Tali took pride in all of it: gathering spaces big enough for important meetings, hydroponics gardens that fed them all, schoolrooms and engines and weapons stations, all of them were hers. As a teenager she signed up for as many different rotations as she could, trying to learn as much as she could about all the ship’s functions. Father liked it when she showed him how much she’d learned, and Uncle Han told her she was clever when she showed them her first combat drone at dinner. It was a shame, really, that she’d have to join another crew when she grew up. Every ship in the Flotilla was important, of course, but like many a child of liveships, Tali felt deep in her bones that the liveships were the best, the _most_ important. To get a really good placement, to earn her home back, she’d have to do something to earn it.

3.

In a decade’s career with the Alliance, Shepard couldn’t say he’d really had a place to call home. Home meant _back home_ , the apartment his mothers still had, though the handful of times he returned on leave his childhood bedroom felt strange and small. But he’d had too many postings to really settle down anywhere, and that suited him just fine.

Until the _Normandy_ , the command he hadn’t expected, the first ship he could call his own. The spare captain’s cabin, with its built-in office, was possibly the most stable accommodation he’d had in years. More than the room, though, there was the rest of the ship, from the hum of the oversized engine to the view through the cockpit. As the months wore by, the ship and its crew became home, one motivated and smoothly functioning unit.

4.

Tali’s Pilgrimage almost seemed like a dream. Her friends had scavenged for spare parts or worked under the table for shady merchants, and here she found herself on a state-of-the-art ship on a vital galactic mission. She went about the ship in a constant state of amazement. How did they let her have so much access to the ship’s experimental systems? How had they allowed her to be here at _all_? The _Normandy_ was a marvel, the kind of cutting-edge tech so many quarians dreamed of getting their hands on. She tried so hard to be on her best behavior, to prove that she had something to offer this crew. Some days she felt very alone, surrounded by all these humans.

But she saw how the crew closed ranks around her when people on the Presidium sneered at her, and she fell asleep to the hum of the engines, and knew that she had a home away from home after all.

5.

Nothing lasts forever. Their crew broke up. Their ship shattered, and took her captain with her.

6.

The new _Normandy_ was too big, too bright, too plastered with Cerberus emblems. When Shepard made his rounds of the ship, his back itched, ready for betrayal.

But the ship pulled him in, inch by inch. The curve of the walls, the familiar way the deck vibrated underfoot. And faces he knew: Joker, Dr. Chakwas, and then Garrus. He slept easier then, knowing there were people aboard the ship who wouldn’t turn on him.

And then Tali joined them, and slowly _Normandy_ became a warmer, safer place. Piece by piece, he built a team he could trust, out of assassins and renegades and thieves, people with no more reason to trust Cerberus than Shepard had. He’d do the mission his way, whatever the Illusive Man said.

7.

Officially her home was the _Neema_ , but Tali spent as much time away on Father’s assignments as with the Migrant Fleet. After a rootless two years passed through one tricky mission after another, boarding Shepard’s _Normandy_ felt almost like a homecoming.

It was nothing of the sort, of course. Not even the same ship, loaded with Cerberus bugs and loyalists. But some of the crew weren’t half bad, and the engine thrummed under her care, and _nobody_ got to be Chief Engineer at her age, especially not of a ship like the _Normandy_.

But there were no other ships like the _Normandy_. And no one else like Shepard.

The Flotilla sent her into exile, and took her name from her, but when they made her _vas Normandy_ , they didn’t know how much that name already dwelled in her heart.

8.

Shepard told the media he was fighting for Earth, though Earth was never really home. His childhood home, Arcturus Station, was no more than a million bits of debris. He ticked off the other homes he was fighting for when he couldn’t sleep: Palaven, Sur’Kesh, Dekuuna, Kahje, Irune, Thessia. Other people’s homes. The whole galaxy had become his problem to fix. At the same time, his world had narrowed; the only safe place lay within the _Normandy_ ’s hull, in the pulse of her engines and life support, under EDI’s ever-watchful eye.

On Rannoch, they won back somebody’s homeworld, at least. He’d thought Tali would stay on the planet they spent so many lives for, but the cost turned out to be higher than she could bear. When she returned to the ship with him, he felt almost like he was in a free fall, not sure which way was up.

Later, in the quarters they had come to share, he thought that where you call home doesn’t matter as much as who you share it with.

9.

Astonishingly, there’s an after.

Shepard spent his life training for combat. Afterward, he learns to pick up a hammer. They build the house themselves, fussing over designs and details. Windows look out over the vista Tali picked out, and clean, simple lines belie the high-tech communications, shields, and filters inside.

Shepard sits on the wraparound porch drinking coffee. Tali should be back from her meeting with Rannoch’s governing board soon. The sun is rising, chasing long violet shadows away around the cliffs and buttes, and the air is fresh, with a faint smell of incoming rain.

After a lifetime spent on stations and ships, this is a good place to have landed.


End file.
